A Somali man carries a fish at Liido beach in Mogadishu, Somalia on December 29, 2023. (Photo by Feisal Omar/Reuters)

A grey seal basks under a rainbow on a beach on the Lincolnshire coast, England on November 21, 2017. (Photo by Sean Weekly/Caters News Agency)

Students dressed as Hindu Lord Shiva, also known as Nataraja, the Lord of Dancers, during a religious event in Mumbai, India, August 30, 2018. (Photo by Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters)

As the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child, women's rights activists point to progress on a wide array of issues but say more needs to be done to protect girls from child marriage, sexual assault and other forms of exploitation. Here is a selection of pictures showing the daily lives of girls across the globe, all taken by female Associated Press photojournalists. Here: In this December 14, 2015, file photo, a young clown rides in the back of a car following a procession to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Hundreds belonging to various clown associations made their annual pilgrimage to the Basilica to pay their respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

A person stands next to the skyline of lower Manhattan on the opening day the Edge NYC, an outdoor observation deck on the 100th floor of 30 Hudson Yards on March 11, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

Vishnu Limbachiya, a hair artist, styles the hair of a man while wearing a blindfold at a park in Ahmedabad, India, May 31, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Couples take part in a competition during a mass wedding of 64 doctoral student couples at Harbin Institute of Technology, a university in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China, June 4, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A man with henna-dyed hair rests on a road near the port area in Karachi, Pakistan on July 3, 2019. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)